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Tonight was quite enjoyable --- despite being a couple of minutes late (shame on me ) due to having written down that the class would start at 7:30pm, not 7:15pm --- I certainly won't be making that mistake again.

Being a visitor, I initially felt a little self-conscious, but after getting some breakfalls in, I felt right as rain. We started things off with a form of Taenohenka that I wasn't familiar with (not a surprise) in which you pivot 180 degrees after the Tenkan. This was followed by another couple of techniques from Katatedori and Kousadori that I had never done before, and thus would be rather difficult to describe properly here without a visually-demonstrative aid (sorry!). What I can tell you about them is that they involved absorbing and leading uke's energy down towards the mat while moving such that they lost their centre forwards (if that makes any sense). Oh --- and one of the techniques also ended in a Nikkyo pin.

We spent the rest of the class working on several (more familiar) forms of Katatedori Kokyunage while grouped in several lines.

Sensei Robert Zimmerman was quite helpful, particularly with the earlier techniques that I wasn't familiar with (it also helped that I just so happened to be paired up with some relatively inexperienced aikidoka at the time, so we got a little more attention because of that).

Once again, it was nice to meet other female aikidoka on the mats (I guess it's still such a novelty to me! ) Tonight, women made up roughly one third of the class, and apparently 12 or so of their total 60-70 students are female. I had gotten so used to being the only one for so long, I suppose I had forgotten what dressing room chitchat was like.

I'll definitely be going back again tomorrow night for another class (it's my last night in Toronto), and afterwards they'll be having an Iaido class that I can sit in and watch --- I'm really looking forward to it.